Are prematurity and low birth weight associated with a delay in the chronology of the eruption of the first tooth?

Objective: To describe the association between the eruption chronology of the first primary teeth among preterm birth and birth weight. Methodology: This is a cross-sectional study, carried out at the Institute of Social Perinatology of Piauí, in the Preventive Program for Pregnant Women and Babies. The research was approved by the UFPI Research Ethics Committee with protocol number 2,445,846. After signing the consent form, the mothers answered the questionnaire with questions related to the baby's socioeconomic data. Then, a clinical examination of the oral cavity and verification of the presence of primary teeth were performed, and these were classified according to the World Dental Federation. The data was tabulated in the SPSS for Windows, version 20.0, to determine the prevalence of tooth eruption in preterm and aterm babies, using Poisson Regression tests, Kolmogorov-Smirnov normality test, and Mann-Whitney test. Results: 229 babies of both genders were examined, of which 39.7% were of preterm birth, and 60.3% were full-term babies. It was found during the study that the first primary tooth in babies under 37 weeks erupted on average at 7.96 months of age, while the average tooth eruption in full-term babies was 6.34 months, being statistically significant (p < 0.001). Conclusion: Male babies with extremely low birth weight, very low birth weight, and low birth weight, had a higher prevalence of erupting their first teeth after 6 months of age. Preterm babies presented, on average, the eruption of the first primary tooth after the term babies.